He was in ill health recently, his wife, Virginia, said. The couple moved from Birmingham about seven years ago.
The Molnar family has been members since the start of St. Stephen in the 1890s. His father, Andrew, was a charter member, according to the 1993 book, The History of St. Stephen’s Church, by Yoland Danyi Szuch.
“It just came natural to him to be involved in everything,” said brother-in-law Steve Vamos.
Mr. Molnar was director of St. Stephen’s Hungarian choir, as his father had been.
“He loved to sing, and so he sang in the choir and eventually he was the choir director,” his wife said. “He liked to be among people. He had a love for the church and a love to do good.”
He was the youngest of 12, and “every one of those children didn’t have any musical lessons, and they all had beautiful voices,” his wife said. “They learned to read music just by being in the choir, but they never had a lesson.”
The Hungarian choir ended, as did the Hungarian-language Mass, as older parishioners moved or died. Another consequence was the end of annual performances in the late 1990s of the Hungarian Nativity play.
“He was sad about it, of course,” his wife said. “Life goes on, and you just have a lot of changes, and you go along with it.”
He was a former member of St. Stephen parish council. He was a member of the Holy Name Society and the Knights of Columbus Fatima Council.
Parishioners remembered his distinctive style as master of ceremonies for church dinners and church raffles.
“He had a voice that carried,” his wife said.
His exclaimed “Wow!” as he announced raffle winners became his signature. When he stepped down from his emcee duties, one raffle-goer asked, “Where’s that ‘Wow’ man?” his wife recalled.
A 1947 graduate of Central Catholic High School, he was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War, serving as a tailgunner.
He was employed at Libbey-Owens-Ford Co. in Rossford for 40 years, retiring in 1987.
He worked on windshield prototypes at L-O-F and, in his basement at home, he built model airplanes with engines and remote-control boats.
He and his wife paid three visits to his parents’ home village in Hungary and visited Rome twice.
“He was really a man of few words, but what he said was usually of interest,” his wife said. His children knew persuading him to buy them a toy meant selling him on its educational benefit, because he believed “if you aren’t going to learn anything from it, it wasn’t worth having,” his wife said.
Surviving are his wife, Virginia, whom he married Feb. 11, 1956; son, Paul; daughters, Mary and Pam; seven grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
Visitation will begin at 9:30 a.m. today in Kinsey-Pavley Funeral Home, with a Rosary service at 10:30 a.m. in the mortuary. Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. today in St. Stephen Church.
The family suggests tributes to the church or Hospice of Northwest Ohio.
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